Officials cite shortage of passengers: Number of Shramik Special trains leaving Surat goes down

“We had run 34 trains in a day to different states from Surat, but now we are not getting the expected number of passengers. So, the number of trains leaving the station are going down day by day. The community leaders give proposal with the number passengers to the district collector’s office, who forward it to us and later the trains are arranged. If demand arises in coming days and if we get good number of passengers we will run trains,” the official said on condition of anonymity.

On Saturday, six trains were supposed to leave to Odisha, but due to shortage of passengers, only three of them ran.
Many of the migrant labourers in Suart have already left to their home states, From May 2, around 440 trains carrying around 7 lakh migrant workers have departed from Surat to different states.

Sources in Surat Railway station said that out of 440 trains till May 30, 237 trains were for UP, followed by 109 trains to Bihar, 70 trains to Odisha, four to West Bengal, three to Uttarakhand, 15 trains to Jharkhand, and one each to Rajasthan and Telangana.

Dhaneshwar Sahoo, Odia community leader in Surat said, “Today there were six trains already booked. But the passengers were less in numbers, so only three trains ran from Surat to Odisha. We have found that 70 per cent of Odia people had left Surat. Out of the remaining people, half of them are staying with their families in Surat and have their own house. The remaining have stayed back as the powerloom factories started functioning and they are back to their work.”